"We weren't good enough in the first half and Steve came down at half-time and had a few words to say," said Darren Wassall, Derby's interim manager. "He made a few changes as well and it did the trick, the second half was much better. The response from the players in the second half was absolutely magnificent. Steve came back down to the dressing room again at the end of the game and he was absolutely thrilled with the response."

Ipswich, despite being two goals up inside 10 minutes and three goals to the good at half-time, remain in search of a first away win of the season. "That hurts, and if I'm being honest it feels like a defeat," said Mick McCarthy. "I think that's what they call a game of two halves, isn't it? The first half was absolutely fantastic for us but in the second half we made mistakes, they attacked us and attacked us and in the end what should have been a win has turned out to be a hard-fought draw."

Burnley vaulted to the top of the table, above QPR and Leicester on goal difference, with a 2-0 win at Doncaster. The match must have been particularly unpleasant for the Rovers captain Rob Jones, who conceded the penalty from which Sam Vokes put the visitors ahead and then scored the second himself while attempting to cut out Kieran Trippier's cross.

The Burnley manager, Sean Dyche, said his team – nine of whose 10 games have been against sides in the bottom half of the table – could no longer rank as a surprise success. "When you're top of the league you naturally come over the radar but we're happy to be a competitive side," he said. "The obvious challenge is there are bigger clubs with bigger budgets but they don't have a guaranteed license to have success. We have to keep working every day. At the minute we have to be relentless, and as a group we want to be relentless."

Federico Macheda, who had scored three goals in his first two starts since arriving at Doncaster on loan from Manchester United, missed the home side's two best chances. "We're disappointed to get beaten and a little bit frustrated," said Paul Dickov. "You have to give Burnley credit. They're a good team, they're top of the league for a reason. Burnley did the basic things in football and that was the reason they won the game."

Leicester kept pace by beating Yeovil 2-1, David Nugent scoring the decisive goal from the spot – his fifth successful penalty in his last five league matches and sixth of the season. "We should have been out of sight, let's be honest," said Nigel Pearson. "I don't think anybody could argue that we didn't deserve to win. With the number of chances we've created we could have won by six."

Yeovil were the only member of the bottom six not to draw, with Sheffield Wednesday's hopes of a first win of the season ended by Keith Andrews' 89th-minute equaliser for Brighton at the Amex Stadium. "I'm frustrated because one lapse in concentration in the whole 95 minutes has cost us," said Dave Jones after the 1-1 draw. "They weren't hurting us, they had become desperate, and if we'd kept our concentration that little bit longer we would have taken the points."

Millwall's run of three successive victories came to an abrupt end at Birmingham, where the left-back David Murphy scored a first-half brace in a 4-0 win. "I was absolutely delighted," said Lee Clark. "What's pleased me as well is the clean sheet. I'm an attack-minded manager and I love my teams to entertain but I just feel we've got so many match-winners at the top end of the field that if we can keep more clean sheets this season, we've got lads who can produce a bit of magic."

His opposite number, Steve Lomas, was predictably disappointed by Millwall's performance. "We warned the lads before the game that Birmingham were a high-energy side and if we didn't come out of the traps then it would be a tough night, but the players did exactly what we didn't want them to do," he said. "We just didn't get going. In this league, if you don't run and scrap then you come unstuck and that's what happened. You can't turn it off and on in the Championship, we certainly can't. Pride is wounded."